


Bother Me Tomorrow, Today I'll Buy No Sorrow

by dancinguniverse



Category: True Detective
Genre: Fireworks, Fourth of July, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 12:03:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1898295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinguniverse/pseuds/dancinguniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You coming out tomorrow?” Marty threads the car around a plodding Cadillac without using his turn signal.</p>
<p>Rust takes a drag off his cigarette. “I tell you my views on patriotism, Marty, we’re gonna be here a while, and the drive home ain’t that long.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bother Me Tomorrow, Today I'll Buy No Sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short bit to celebrate the Fourth. Because every holiday should be a fanfic-writing holiday!

“You coming out tomorrow?” Marty threads the car around a plodding Cadillac without using his turn signal.

Rust takes a drag off his cigarette. “I tell you my views on patriotism, Marty, we’re gonna be here a while, and the drive home ain’t that long.”

Marty rolls his eyes. “Well I’ll thank you for not trying, then. How about you just eat a hot dog and enjoy some fireworks? Everybody likes fireworks.”

Rust glances over, doesn’t say that he can get bright flashes and smears of colored light anytime he wants, without thunder so loud he can’t hear himself think.

“Besides, Laurie already said you were coming.”

Rust knows this. He’s supposed to pick up macaroni and potato salad at the grocery store on his way home. Laurie has a late shift. “There you go, then,” he shrugs. “Not sure why the concern.”

Marty shakes his head. “Just trying to make conversation, man. I have no idea how that woman puts up with you.”

Rust stares straight ahead. “We tend to avoid long car rides.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Marty fights a grin.

Laurie’s sitting with Maggie on the picnic blanket, dark heads bent together over a Tupperware container that holds the remains of a patriotically colored dessert. Laurie stabs at a blueberry with her fork and then waves it in the air, likely sharing some story from work. Her shoulders are slightly pinked from a long day in the sun. Maggie shakes her head, smiling. Her legs are curled up under her, and her hair is falling out of its braid. They look at ease, and Rust lets his eyes linger. They don’t look his way.  

The girls are down the hill, playing with some other kids they’ve found. They return occasionally to take another sparkler from the pack Marty bought that morning, and then flee again, trailing smears of light that for once everyone can see. In the twilight, their bright hair and dresses fade away, leaving only the dollar store sparklers they hold out in front of them like fairy wands.

Marty heaves himself onto the tailgate next to Rust, holding out a plastic cup. “It’s lemonade,” he says when Rust just stares at him. Rust doesn’t say that wasn’t his question. He’s never really understood Marty’s insistence on feeding him, like he thinks Rust won’t do it himself if left to his own devices, like Rust hadn’t spent his whole life prior to Marty in environments a lot more hostile and less navigable than Louisiana and the CID. In the end he takes the cup without comment.

The darkness grows deeper. In the trees, the lightning bugs blink greenly, a Morse code only they can read. The children become impatient for the show to begin and disperse back to their families, like there’s some group instinct that that’ll make it start sooner. Audrey floats off with a friend, but Macie climbs up into the truck with her daddy. Rust keeps watching the fireflies, lets the two of them carry their own conversation.

The first boom and crackle of falling light would draw the attention of a dead man, but Marty grabs Rust’s knee and Macie’s shoulder anyway, as if they might not have noticed. “Here it goes!”

Rust leans back on his elbows and enjoys the show. Marty’s not entirely wrong; Rust likes the flares of color, the glittery curtains and the glowing trails like a willow, the surprise patterns that emerge and fade. He likes that he can feel the accompanying thunder shaking the truck bed under him, like the colors themselves have sound and force. It’s a tame way to get a high off sensory overload, but Rust won’t turn it down.

The last crack of light echoes around the field and then dies away, and Rust’s ears ring a bit in the relative silence. The quiet stretches out and starts to fill with the chatter of the surrounding families. The smoke that hangs over the trees curls on itself, twists against the backdrop of stars. “That it?” he asks without thinking, and Marty grins over at him, starts to laugh just as half a dozen fireworks go off at once and the southeastern sky lights up with frantic explosions, one on top of the other.

He feels the sound in his bones and gives himself over to it, lets the colors wash over and through him. The rush doesn’t let up, an unpredictable, crashing drumbeat, until suddenly it does, and the last flares of light fade into the roiling smoke. There’s no silence this time because people—Marty most of all—have been hooting and hollering since the climax started, and they don’t stop for a while. Rust flexes his fingers and breathes. By the time Marty claps his shoulder and asks for a hand with the coolers, Rust feels tucked safely back in his own skin. “Yeah,” he agrees.

Laurie slides her hand into his while they wait for Maggie to find Audrey. “Good show?” she asks, and he rubs a thumb over her knuckles.   
  
“Not bad.”


End file.
